


Remember

by maholmies



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, multific fluff angst drama sherlock johnlock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-09
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-10 21:57:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/790629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maholmies/pseuds/maholmies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"His eyes didn't look empty, but glazed over, as if the real Sherlock was desperately trying to break through the misty haze to reach him." In which the Reichenbach Fall was real, but Sherlock survives the fall. The result is devastatingly hard for John to deal with, but then, all Sherlock had to do was remember. Swearing, eventual Johnlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

_Remember me when I am gone away,_

_Gone far away into the silent land;_

_When you can no more hold me by the hand,_

_Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay._

_Remember me when no more day by day_

_You tell me of our future that you plann'd:_

_Only remember me; you understand_

_It will be late to counsel then or pray._

_Yet if you should forget me for a while_

_And afterwards remember, do not grieve:_

_For if the darkness and corruption leave_

_A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,_

_Better by far you should forget and smile_

_Than that you should remember and be sad._

-  _Remember by Christina Rosetti_

**_Prologue_ **

John watched as Sherlock's slender hands traced a pattern on the silver and black wallpaper at 221b, his movements delicate as a temple dancer's. He gently tugged the pieces of wallpaper which had come undone with showers of bullets on bored days; he rubbed at the sprayed graffiti as if it would disappear under his touch. Under his fingertips, it all felt so surreal. As if he was sleeping right now and he would wake up and be somewhere else. John watched as he desperately tried to think of something associated with this wall, something he had done before, but nothing came to mind. He furrowed his eyebrows slightly, the bridge of his nose creasing. Then he turned to his partner and shook his head in frustration.

"No," he said simply, but his tone was defeated and his body betrayed the neutral expression on his face. John watched as the fight left his eyes, the intense concentration he had coerced Sherlock into vanishing just as quickly as it had appeared. His shoulders drooped noticeably. "I tried, but I just can't." The frustration he felt was becoming evident. He bit his lip a little too hard, barely noticing as a trickle of blood slowly sliding down to the prickly chin that he had not shaved for three days. John shook his head.

"Sherlock, we don't have to do this now," he said gently, whipping a tissue from his pocket and making his way towards him. He held Sherlock's forearm in a tight but not uncomfortable grip and began dabbing his friend's face with the crumpled tissue. Sherlock didn't fight him off, didn't push him away with a huff and an insult. He simply stared off into nothing, lost in the dark abyss he had fallen in to. It was as if half of him wasn't there. He leaned his hand against the wall again, but he didn't turn to examine it. John squeezed his arm tightly, jolting him from his thoughts before he could go in to them so deep he would not find his way out. "Come on, then. It's 6 o'clock. Do you know what happens at 6 o'clock?" Sherlock tried. He really did. He looked to the windows, light spilling through and streaking the glass where Mrs Hudson had made a feeble attempt at a cleaning job. He closed his eyes and took one long breath, sucking in as much air as he could and blowing it back out. Then he opened his eyes and replied dully, "I don't know. I don't know, John. Why don't I know?"

He shook himself from John's grasp and attempted a march around the flat but ended up teetering, lolling from side to side in a disorientated rage. John could tell he was smouldering, trying to sort through his smudged thoughts and not being able to do it. He couldn't trust his own mind, the one thing that he had been able to rely on for all of his life and it was absolutely infuriating. He scooped up his tea mug, staring at the logo through squinted eyes, trying to make it out. He couldn't. So he hurled it against the wall, watching the crafted mug shatter and fall to the floor in a shower of white pieces. As soon as he had did it, he instantly regretted it. His light eyes traced the edges of the cracked pieces, realisation dawning on him far too quickly of what he did, and John's done for and slightly disappointed face greeting him when he looked up just made him feel all the more ashamed. He didn't know why, but he couldn't face it. He dropped on to the chair he stood beside and covered his ears, the sound of the cup smashing over and over in his rattling head.

It was John's turn to lose the will. He ran a hand through his hair and tried to ignore what had just happened for just a moment so he could form some rational thought. The cup was an accurate representation of his strength; something that had to be created over a while but could be broken within a few seconds, especially if your name was Sherlock Holmes. He had been at this for three days with his best friend and he cared enough to do it for three days more, but the outburst just dampened his spirits and robbed him of any hope that perhaps things would get better. He really thought they were making progress, that soon he and Sherlock would be able to sit down and have a decent conversation about the weather, or dinner, or even an insult or two. All those things he thought he'd never miss, but did. All those things he thought he could live without, but couldn't.

He looked to the windows, the light falling on Sherlock's table of knickknacks. His violin. A cup of tea. The newspaper. Then he gazed back at his friend: a helpless, shadowed face that needed someone. That needed him. His eyes didn't look empty, but glazed over, as if the real Sherlock was desperately trying to break through the misty haze to reach him. And John knew he couldn't give up on him.

"Come on, Sherlock. Just remember."

 

 


	2. Chapter 1: After the Fall

"Sherlock Holmes?"

John's hands were clammy, the cold sweat that enveloped his whole body making hand prints on the hard plastic seat he was gripping so tightly we was sure his knuckles would crack. He had been sitting in the same position for so long; hours maybe, and he was sure if he went to uncurl his hands he would find they were stuck in the same position. His head was pounding, a million thoughts milling around so quickly and so unwanted. He looked up slowly, his body feeling ridiculously numb. He looked up slowly, his stiff movements emphasising how numb he felt. A doctor stood in front of him, an unreadable look plastered across his face. The impact of the blow John was sure he was about to hit him with was felt early, and as soon as John had eased himself out of his seat he simply wobbled on the jelly that he called legs and fell back into sitting position. The doctor eased towards him, blue scrub clad and a sympathetic look on his face. John Watson didn't need sympathy. John Watson needed answers.

"Sorry for the wait," the doctor said, more softly this time. He met John's eyes, faced with the blank expression that was plastered across the soldier's face. His vision was blurred by the tears that had been threatening to overflow for the past day, ever since he took residence in this drab waiting room with the white clock that made that sharp, short ticking and pinged softly on the hour every hour, the fashion magazines that looked as if they had been there for quite a while but hadn't been so much as touched and the disgustingly clinical smell of disinfectant and latex. "Shall we walk and talk? Are you alright to stand?"

John felt like there were a million pieces of him on the floor and in order to stand straight he would have to pick them all up, one by one. He decided he could approach vertical existence two ways; he could take it slowly and steadily, or he could just get it over with. He opted for the latter, hauling his stiff body out of the seat in such a matter that if the doctor hadn't of jumped up and held his shaking figure he probably would have ended up on the floor with all the rest of his emotions. He took a tentative step forward as if he was a toddler just learning to walk. He got into a rhythm of wrenching his foot off the floor as if gravity was attracted to his feet especially and plonking it down somewhere in front of him, resulting in wonky yet successful walking. When he was satisfied he took a deep breath and stepped on to the corridor, the doctor in tow. The buzzing noise in his ears that he had failed to notice until now got louder as the doctor began talking to him in a patronising tone. He hated it.

"Look, Dr. Watson, I don't know how to tell you all of this. Please do note that it's a lot to take in but you needn't be worried. Your boyfriend is in the best hands possible," He began, clasping his hands together and gauging John's reaction. He didn't even bother to squeak out "he's not my boyfriend" or even make any indication that he wasn't. It was exhausting enough breathing. "You witnessed it, so I hear. So then you know exactly what happened. And you're an army doctor, so you know a bad head injury when you see it." John nodded solemnly. He wasn't going to kid himself; Sherlock's leap off the building was almost definitely deadly. That's why he was surprised that when he hurled himself on the pavement beside his friend and took his pulse, it was spindly, irregular, but still there. He'd already ran through every single scenario in his head. He had prepared for the worst. He was expecting the worst. He was waiting to ring Lestrade and tell him that he'd have to find a new consulting detective. God help him, he wouldn't ever, but it was the best way to break the news to the detective inspector. He blinked back the remnants of tears that still resided in his eyes. Then he nodded once again.

"Just...tell me like it is," he breathed, squeezing his right hand into a tight fist. The corridors winded this way and that and the world was a mess of white and lights and doctors and people, yet all of them had the same face; a structured jaw, light eyes, deducing something about him. The face he wanted to see most and least. "Don't sugarcoat it. What's wrong with him?"

The doctor didn't seem surprised by his request. "Something must have broke his fall, Dr. Watson. It's the only thing that can explain it." John's head whipped around. The relief that lifted a thousand weights off of his chest was so refreshing that he almost let out a choked sob. He stopped briefly, gripping a wall as if it was dear life. So he wasn't dead. Not yet. He resumed his walking. "Do you remember seeing anything like that?"

The events of a few hours ago were a complete blur. After Sherlock had said those two fateful words to him, he decided that was it. His brain shut off. He saw his best friend fall, but he didn't take it in. And now that he thought about it, sorted through painful memories, he remembered something. A moment of relief he took, a minute that he closed his eyes to tell himself it wasn't real. And when he opened them, there was blood on the pavement. There was blood in his nightmares. But he hadn't seen the whole fall.

"He must have, oh, he must have been..." His words trailed off in case he babbled. He did not have time to babble. They were climbing stairs now, John unaware as to how he hadn't noticed the change in scenery. They would be there soon. He would have to face it soon. He would have to face him soon.

"Well, whatever happened, he's extremely lucky," the doctor said, matter-of-fact. "No bones broken, but extremely bad bruising. He has head injuries, as expected. We've checked for swelling of the brain, dizziness, nausea, that type of thing, but physically he seems fine." John nodded, then stopped. He backtracked his fast moving train of thought.

"Physically?"


	3. Amnesia

"Amnesia?"

John barely heard the words leaving his own mouth, his palm pressed against the cool glass in front of him distracting him from the reality of what the doctor had suggested to him. He breathed slowly and heavily, trying not to pass out in the heat of the hallway, noting how clean the glass was; how his right hand would leave a dirty print once he lifted his hand off of it. His focus shifted to the scene behind the window quickly, still observing the room behind him. He had rounded the corner and approached the room slowly, his wobbly walking making it seem like it was miles away. The scene that met him through the window was far from reassuring. The room was simple, mostly white in colour and entirely sickening. The curtains were open and a pool of light fell on the floor beside the clean, crisp bed, which took up most of the room. A mop of black curls were splayed out across the pillow, the usually delicate posture of the body lying on it ruined. John couldn't read the expression on his face from a distance, but he could observe him. Sherlock was lying rigid in composure on the stiff, starchy sheets, his hands positioned in a fixed manner on top of the blanket, an oxygen mask clapped over his mouth. John's eyes fell upon the ECG machine beside the bed, the rising and falling of the green jagged line and the incessant beeps he could hear in the quiet corridor. The best and worst thing about it was that he could tell that Sherlock was still alive. But the fear that he wouldn't be for much longer had infested itself in John's brain and enveloped his thoughts in a cool, damp atmosphere. He shook himself from them and decided that he couldn't wait out here any longer. He needed to be with his friend if he woke up again. Perhaps he could help him to remember something, anything... but he wasn't sure if he could face him yet. What the doctor had just told him had been nothing like he had been expecting. He didn't know that much about amnesia; loss of memory, could be caused by many things and there were many types of it, but he couldn't exactly give a definition of it. He didn't oversee psychological problems in Afghanistan. He turned to the doctor slowly, meeting his observant gaze.

"Post-traumatic amnesia. He's suffered a bad head injury, but there doesn't seem to be anything wrong except for the psychological aspects of his health. When he first woke up, he was calm -" John let a small smile grace his face. Sherlock Holmes was calm in every situation. "- but he couldn't recall how he had gotten to hospital in the first place. He spoke with our psychologist and we've diagnosed him as retrograde. No need to look worried, Dr. Watson. That just means that he can't remember the events prior to the fall. It's most likely transient, but the permanence of this predicament can be debated..."

His mouth kept moving, but John couldn't hear a word. He turned back to the window, once again looking through the glass and not at it. Sherlock had never looked so helpless in his life and it made John feel sick to the stomach to see his friend stuck to the bed, lost in unconsciousness. The doctor stopped talking and looked back to him, tentatively taking a step towards him and laying a hand on his shoulder.

"I know it's hard," he murmured, trying to keep his voice level. He hated ones like this; where a happy ending wasn't promised. "But I think he needs you right now. Do you think you could face up to it...if not for you, for him?" #

John swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat and took his hand from the window. He heard the doctor padding towards the door and from the corner of his eye he saw him twisting the handle, opening it with a quiet click, wasting no time in turning curtly and marching in. He tried to mask his shaking legs and curling and uncurling his hand into a fist. He kept his eyes on the white speckled floor until his feet got to the brass strip on the floor in the doorway which separated the linoleum floor from the blue carpeted room. He took one big step inside and finally looked up.

From up close, Sherlock looked a lot worse. He observed the large gash on the left side of his face, running from his eyebrow to his jawline. It wasn't that deep, he noted as he hurried towards the soft seat positioned beside the bed. It probably wouldn't scar. The door closed behind him with a click, letting him know he was alone in the room, the smell of strong antiseptic invading his senses and he struggled with keeping the cup of coffee he'd had about 2 hours ago in his stomach. He sat down promptly and trailed the chair closer to the bed, too quickly to mind about the screeching sound it made against the floor. Sherlock was breathing heavily, his hair slicked against his forehead with sweat. John leaned forward and pushed his hair back, allowing him too cool down slightly. His slender hands were bruised, the left one swollen along the wrist, but the doctor had already told John nothing was broken. Probably a defense mechanism; gathering of fluid around a potential injury, or perhaps a ligament tear. One wouldn't know until the test of the scans came back. That would probably take a long time.

In sleep, Sherlock looked troubled. He had a somewhat angry, unaware look on his face that John couldn't help but smile about. He looked exactly as he did when he was considering a case, looking at evidence, when he wouldn't talk for days on end and blanked out the world. Ironically just like he was doing now.

"Oh, Sherlock, what state have you gotten yourself into?" John murmured, his eyes tracing the sleeping figure in front of him. He traced the shape of the gash on his own cheek, measuring its size with his finger. Wondering how much it would hurt. Praying silently that, when his best friend did come to, he would remember John at least. He placed his hand on Sherlock's, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest, his breath steaming up the oxygen mask.

He sat in the silence of the room, wallowing in the peace that simply watching Sherlock breathe gave him. He absentmindedly traced a pattern on Sherlock's hand with his thumb, trying to capture reality in this time of numbness. 7 hours ago, he and Sherlock were with Molly. Now they were here. John didn't know why, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to know. That was why he was so uptight. He didn't want to ask Sherlock why - why had he jumped? Was he depressed, angered? Did he jump for a good reason? He feared the answer more than anything else in that moment in case the answer involved himself, in case the answer was it was all his fault. He couldn't bring himself to recall all the events of the day, to work it out for himself just like Sherlock always did.

Instead he listened to the beeping and tried to block out anything else. He pretended he was back in Baker Street, reading a paper or making tea or writing up something on his blog. He pretended he was lying in bed, sitting at the kitchen table, sitting on a chair and watching the world go past through the window. Those normal, everyday things he had taken for granted so many times before, but wouldn't do again. Especially not if Sherlock woke up. _When_ he woke up, he told himself scornfully, a soft look on his face as he watched over him like a guardian angel. _When he woke up_.


End file.
